Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
by Kristine Thorne
Summary: This is a Bad Girls songfic, and is set after Karen gets the sack in series five.


Disclaimer: All characters unfortunately belong to Shed Productions.   
  
A/N: This is a Bad Girls songfic. The lyrics are from Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, and the story is set after the episode where Neil gives Karen the sack in series five.   
  
Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word  
  
*What do I do when lightening strikes me?*  
  
I can't believe I'm stood here, trying to clear my desk. I've inhabited this office for the majority of the last two years. I think Grayling really enjoyed telling me I'd been sacked. I just can't do this on my own, I thought. I can't go through every little reminder of my time here alone. I needed someone so badly it hurt. So, not having any better judgment to go against, I made the last request of my time here and rang down to the wing and asked for Yvonne Atkins to be brought up to my office. When Di Barker arrived as escort to Yvonne, she had such a supersilious expression on her face that I was pretty certain just who was going to be filling this office with their personality after I left. Before Yvonne closed the door, I hung the "Do Not Disturb" sign on it. Yvonne ran her eyes over the chaos of my desk and said,   
  
"What've they done?" I looked her straight in the eye.   
  
"I think Neil's words were, you're sacked, and I think he's fitting up Di Barker as my replacement. So, I'm clearing out my desk." I reached in to one of the drawers and pulled out a bottle of scotch and held it up.   
  
"I'm sure you can find a good home for this." After a moment's hesitation she took the bottle from me.   
  
"I've got a better idea," She said, "Why don't we toast the utter stupidity of the old boys network." so that's what I do when all goes tits up, I get drunk with the godmother of my wing. That was not the brightest idea she's ever had. I drank too much and she hardly touched her second glass. I think she could see I was in the weirdest mood she'd ever witnessed from me, because she simply let me talk. As I began to rifle through the papers on my desk, she said,   
  
"Is there anything I can do to help?" I gestured to the filing cabinet in the corner.   
  
"If you could go through that and see if there's anything that doesn't belong in there, that'd be great." If giving a prisoner alcohol and openly inciting her to get drunk in my office hadn't been breaking any rules, positively encouraging her to go through numerous sensitive folders, any of which could have been about her fellow inmates, would have been a hanging offence.   
  
*What've I got to do, to be heard.*   
  
As I sifted through the recent applications for cell changes, one being from Tina O'kane funnily enough, and tried to put them in some sort of order for whoever would have to deal with them from next week, Yvonne briefly flipped through the folders in the top two drawers of the filing cabinet. I noticed that when she reached Denny's file, she removed it and began reading. I should have stopped her, but by this time I couldn't be bothered. If Yvonne took this opportunity to find out as much about her fellow inmates as possible, far be it from me to stop her. Yvonne had helped me more than she knew in the passed few weeks, and I owed her big time. Replacing Denny's folder in the drawer, she moved on to the bottom one. I vaguely remembered putting Helen's report of sexual assault along with an entire copy of Shell Dockley's folder, most of it about what she'd suffered at the hands of Fenner, in there. But again, I was passed caring. Yvonne wasn't the type of person to use the type of information she would learn from those files to her advantage. Clearly seeing that this drawer contained something entirely different, Yvonne sat down on the floor and began going through it. She paused on Helen Stuart's file.   
  
"Jesus," She said. I looked over her shoulder to see what she was reading. We both read in silence, though I now know that report word for word. On reaching the end, Yvonne simply put it to one side and began removing the other files in the bottom drawer. She briefly scanned the files on Shell Dockley, but not seeing anything to immediately interest her, she laid them on top of Helen's. I had returned to my desk by this point and had again refilled my glass.   
  
"Did Nikki never tell you what Fenner did to Helen?" I was as surprised to hear myself saying this as Yvonne was to hear it. She looked up at me.   
  
"No, she didn't." I lit a cigarette and turned to face my computer. It wasn't just the paper records I had to sort out. I could see Yvonne's reflection in the monitor and I gave her a rueful, mirthless smile.   
  
"She used to tell Nikki most things," I added. Yvonne gave a bark of laughter. I swivelled round and stared at her.   
  
"Are you seriously telling me you didn't know?" She asked, looking as astounded as I've ever seen her.   
  
"Didn't know what?" I said, wondering just what else I hadn't known about the women in my care. Yvonne just shook her head at me and returned to what she was reading. All she said was,   
  
"You find out all sorts being on my side of the wire." Seeing I wasn't about to get any more out of her I said,   
  
"Oh well, at least she had someone to listen to her." Yvonne stood up and moved towards my desk. She was holding a file that I also realised was very familiar. The look on her face was a mixture of pain and anger and part disgust.   
  
"And just who did you have to listen to you?"   
  
"At the time," I said, realising she was holding the file containing my account of what Jim had done to me, "Nobody wanted to listen, being heard wasn't a luxury I had access too." So, maybe this is what I do when I need to be heard, get the top dog of my ex-wing drinking my scotch, give her access to lots of sensitive material and let her do the rest. Did I want her to know about why I had furiously driven half dressed through central London? I doubt it. I think I just wanted anyone, someone to hear me for a change, to listen to me instead of that bastard Fenner.   
  
*What do I say when it's all over,  
  
sorry seems to be the hardest word.*   
  
I took the file out of Yvonne's hand and laid it on the desk.   
  
"Don't feel sorry for me, Yvonne," I warned her. "If I'd only taken Helen Stewart seriously in the first place, that might not have happened."   
  
"And just where the hell do you get an idea like that from?" She said, her anger clearly growing. I held up a hand.   
  
"Yvonne, listen to me. I've gone through the hate and the anger, part of me still feels it, but the rest of me knows it won't ever be resolved. After Helen had left and after your attempt to get over the wall, I spent so much time wondering what I could do to put things right for Helen. She hadn't deserved what Fenner did to her, and she certainly didn't deserve the total disbelief she got from me. But when nobody could find where she'd gone, the only thing I could feel was sorry. But she's disappeared off the face of the Earth. So, that's probably a word that'll go unsaid between me and Helen."   
  
"You astound me you do," She said, helping herself to some more scotch and topping up my glass. "You're talking like Fenner didn't have anything to do with it!"   
  
"Oh, trust me," I said with venom dripping from my tongue. "He definitely had the lion's share of why Helen left this place, but she might not have had too if I'd seen him for what he is sooner."   
  
"And what about what he did to you?" She asked quietly. Suddenly all the barriers came crashing down.   
  
"That isn't quite so cut and dried," I told her. She removed the file from under my hand an opened it, pointing to a sentence half way through my report. She slapped the file back down on the desk and read out what I'd written.   
  
"I kept telling him to stop, but he just held me down and kept on going. Karen, what isn't cut and dried about that? Fenner raped you." I picked up the file and flipped it back to the first page.   
  
"I take it you've read the entire thing?" I said, my voice dripping with Sarcasm. She nodded. "Then you'll have read that in the beginning I didn't exactly say that oh so tiny but meaningful word."   
  
"You feel like that was your punishment for not listening to Helen, don't you?" Part of me hated her for being right.   
  
"That's a twisted piece of logic, even for you, Yvonne." But she was right. Was that why I hadn't initially gone to the police? Was it because I now knew what Helen had gone through. I knew that I had let her go through that without my support. At least I'd had a policewoman who'd at least made the pretence of believing me. God, in this case, sorry really was the hardest thing for me to be. For me to acknowledge what had really happened to Helen, I'd had to be put through it myself.   
  
*It's sad, it's so sad,   
  
it's a sad, sad situation,   
  
and it's getting more and more absurd.*   
  
Yvonne continued to watch me with those piercing eyes of hers.   
  
"And is that why you ended up with Ritchie?" Her question threw me for a minute.   
  
"Ritchie was different. He didn't know about Jim. Apart from knowing that I carried the keys to your cell, he knew absolutely nothing about me or my life or anyone in it."   
  
"Like Mark, you mean? I always wondered why he left."   
  
"Mark couldn't stand being around me or Fenner. He spent half his time wanting to kick Fenner's face in and the other half constantly trying to look after me." Yvonne reached for my packet of cigarettes and lit one as if they were her own, which made me inwardly smile.   
  
"This has got to be the most screwed up situation I've ever heard of," She said succinctly. She took a deep drag and continued. "You didn't believe Helen when she told you about Fenner assaulting her, so when Fenner does even worse to you, you somehow have this crazy idea that you deserved it. So, when you eventually went to the police, which I'm guessing you were persuaded to do by Mark, they wouldn't take up the charge, so you finally knew what Helen had gone through with Fenner. Then, in a really fucked up attempt to convince yourself that none of it had ever happened, you take up with a tosser like my Ritchie. Do you have any idea just how much sense all that doesn't make?" I laughed mirthlessly, the scotch clearly getting to me by this time.   
  
"Oh, I know," I said. "I don't think my life does straightforward any more."   
  
"Karen, this isn't just absurd, this is bleedin mental. Neither you nor Helen ever deserved what Fenner did to you. You have to start believing that."   
  
*It always seems to me,   
  
that sorry seems to be the hardest word.*   
  
"I just wish I could tell her I'm sorry," I said quietly. It was then I began to regret drinking so much Scotch. As I felt the tears begin to coarse down my face, I turned the chair so that I was facing away from her, towards the computer. I heard her move, and felt a hand on my shoulder. As I finally let myself cry, which I now realise I hadn't done in far too long, I began to wonder just what had led me here, to this office, this day, this sad, sad situation. As she gently kneaded the tension out of my shoulders, I said,   
  
"I'm sorry." All she could say was,   
  
"You ain't the one who needs to be. Helen might not know it, but I'd say you've appologised to her far more than necessary. You've got to let go of it. You can't keep punishing yourself for trusting someone." I took a deep breath, trying to stem the flow of tears that I was afraid would never stop.   
  
"I need to see her," I said. "I need to put the record straight with Helen. It might be the hardest thing I'll ever do, but I have got to tell her I'm sorry." As I reached for the box of tissues, Yvonne moved away from me and refilled both our glasses.   
  
"Would you like me to ask Lauren to try and find her?" The question hit me like a kick in the ribs. I stared at her.   
  
"Are you serious?"   
  
"If Lauren can't turn up anything, then I'll do it myself when I get out. I've only got a couple of months to go."   
  
"If anyone can find Helen, you could," I said.   
  
"Oh, yeah," She said drily. "If the Atkins family want to find someone, they nearly always do." When Yvonne left, and I'd picked up everything that belonged to me, I closed the office door with a feeling of finality. I wasn't just closing the door on two years of my life, I was closing it on some of the feelings of guilt I'd felt since I'd discovered the true nature of Jim Fenner. I had a slightly lighter heart when I drove away from HMP Larkhall, and all because of Yvonne Atkins. She had offered to find Helen Stewart for me. I wondered if she really knew what she was doing for me. If I could find Helen, and if I could finally put things right between us, maybe sorry would no longer be the hardest word. 


End file.
